Starring: Fann Wong, Gurmit Singh
Director: Jack Neo
Category: (English, Putonghua, Tamil) IIA
Before he made it as a filmmaker, Singaporean actor-director Jack Neo was best known for his television stand-up comedy. But that was more than a decade ago, and Just Follow Law seems to be a retreading of Neo's past glories, with a narrative flitting from social satire to worn-out farce, replete with crass jokes and obvious innuendo.
The film's first half hour is amusing enough as a series of verbal and visual gags about red tape and office politics. The protagonists - Tanya (Fann Wong), an ambitious, bourgeois publicity director at a fictitious Singapore government agency, and Ah Zui (Gurmit Singh), an uncouth labourer who became a scapegoat for an accident that embarrassed the government agency - have a flare-up, enter into a car chase (yes, that old chestnut) and a car crash that leaves them inexplicably trapped in each other's bodies. The satire is then dropped in favour of a cheap gag fest revolving around how the loutish Ah Zui misuses Tanya's body, squeezing 'her' breasts, not wearing bras to work, and ogling other women on the beach.
The way the film zips back and forth between these two threads makes it play more like a TV sitcom, and the potential of the body-switching saga is lost in the disjointed storytelling. In fact, Just Follow Law flaunts its incoherence like gold, resorting to melodrama once too often and a heroic act near the end only serves to heighten how predictable this film is. Neo has created a piece that promises a lot, but delivers little.
